Abillon, Anne-France

Anne-France, Abillon, Vains, France

Under her regard, a plant or mineral undergoes a naive deconstruction of the universe that exalts detail as an essential component. We discover detail detached from the whole in a sovereign autonomy that reveals the radical originality of its form and its perfectly contingent inscription in a space in which it is freely deployed. Yoland Simon

Poetry of the landscape

In our philosophy classes, thanks to gestalt theory, we learned that the whole may be different from the sum of the parts, which we only perceive in the formal context relating them. Anne-France Abillon, however, invites us to take part in a radically different operation. Under her regard, a plant or mineral undergoes a naive deconstruction of the universe that exalts detail as an essential component. We discover detail detached from the whole in a sovereign autonomy that reveals the radical originality of its form and its perfectly contingent inscription in a space in which it is freely deployed. Thus, trees and their foliage, plants and their blooms, and leaves and their intimate lineaments paint the fascinating calligraphy of ancient alphabets or the exquisitely composed networks of antique lace. In an astonishing reversal, nature now imitates man and his meticulous works. The artist recomposes from the real, using motifs one might call miniatures, illuminations, mosaics, arabesques, hieroglyphs, cabalistic signs. Striving for meaning is useless, however. Here, nature has ceased to be the temple of a mysterious and profound unity. On the contrary, nature is to be read through the diversity of its configurations. We are to surprise the contours of the pieces of the puzzle, without attempting to assemble them. My words fail to do justice to what the eyes capture, what the artist has seized in her compositions: the interlacements and intertwinements of branches, the pure geometries of fine twigs, the foliar laminae strung with steely veins, the thin verticals of birches, as orderly as garden fences. But, once again, there is no need for recognition. Botany compiles erudite nomenclatures; botany transforms fragments into clues. Anne-France Abillon has chosen to magnify fragments in an anonymous isolation.